History
Legal Aid of Napa Valley has been serving Napa County since its founding in 1967. Originally named “Napa County Legal Assistance Agency,” Legal Aid was created to “improve social justice, economic opportunity, and to assure due process and equal protection of the law by providing low-income and vulnerable Napa County residents with access to high-quality, effective legal services.”
In the late 1990s, amendments to federal policies and regulations affecting legal service providers prompted Legal Aid to merge with Legal Aid of Marin to form Legal Aid of the North Bay. Services were delivered locally but managed out of the combined agency’s Marin County headquarters. Subsequent changes in the funding structures of both organizations led to a mutual decision to unwind the merger. By June 2004, Legal Aid was once again an independent, community-run organization, providing limited but much-needed services to Napa County’s elderly population.
In 2005, a group of dedicated local attorneys spearheaded the expansion of the agency. With a modest cy pres award and financial and in-kind support from local law firms, Legal Aid added a full-time executive director, a bilingual supervising attorney and a legal advocate to its staff.
A small grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development enabled Legal Aid to start its Baseline Legal Service Program in March 2005, providing legal services to the homeless population of Napa County, focusing on disabled persons, veterans and victims of domestic violence.
Later that spring, thanks to the generous support of Auction Napa Valley and the assistance of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, Legal Aid launched the innovative Immigrant Legal Service Program. By combining free, bilingual education and outreach forums with attorney consultations by appointment, Legal Aid advised more than 1,000 Napa County immigrants in its first year of operation.
Since its reopening in 2005, Legal Aid of Napa Valley has provided direct legal advice and representation to more than 2,500 clients through its three legal services programs. Its annual operating budget has risen from less than $100,000 in 2004-2005 to more than $400,000 in 2007-2008. Today, Legal Aid’s bilingual staff includes five attorneys, one legal advocate and an administrative assistant.
